Jorg Asmussen offers the first hint of an answer in his personal behaviour. He was a type familiar in Germany but absolutely freakish in Greece or, for that matter, the United States: a keenly intelligent, highly ambitious civil servant who had no other ambition but to serve his country. His sparkling curriculum vitae was missing a line that would be found on the resumes of men in his position almost anywhere else in the world - the line where he leaves government service for Goldman Sachs to cash out. When I asked another prominent German civil servant why he hadn't taken time out of public service to make his fortune working for some bank, the way every American civil servant who is anywhere near finance seems to want to do, his expression changed to alarm. "But I could never do this," he said. "It would be illoyal!"
-Michael Lewis, Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment